Is it OK to move to another E+ seat if already it's empty?

Plant yourself in the middle of the set as soon as you get on. If someone comes by claiming the seat... "oops... I am in A! ohhh, sorry..."

Sit in the middle, so others won't see an advantage of moving into that row.

Noone will take your original correct seat of course.

After everyone boards and if you find yourself with people around you, casually look at your BP, recognize your error, and take your assigned seat.

[heh... OP, you changed your post deleting the specifics... so my response doesnt seem to match... hopefully it helps.]

Nice way of doing it.

By the way, CS agents do have the ability to block seats on day of departure. Its still a soft block but tells the GA to give the seat away last. They did it for me the other night when my redeye was delayed an hour and a half. I ended up getting the whole 3 seats to myself, but it didnt appear long enough to help out much. As long as I get the open middle Im ok.

A similar strategy is to book aisle and window when traveling with somebody else. If the middle seat happens to get filled, I've never had a problem swapping for the aisle/window.

That's what my husband and I do too. However, there was one time when the person in our middle turned out to be travelling with his wife. He wanted to trade the window (that I offered him) with a much taller and larger man sitting in the middle next to his wife. I was not too happy...

My wife and I do this (Aisle/Window/Open middle) all the time, as we are both elite. Works great most of the time. Interestingly, on full planes, we usually have better success when sitting towards the back of E+, rather than the front. It would appear that, IME, they fill front to back, although that controverts common sense regarding elite behavior

Pat

Slight variation on the theme here...

I had a flight a couple of days ago, it was almost completely booked. I had an exit row (E+) aisle. There was a GS member in the window who got called up to F, so the guy next to me (in the middle) moved over. Great, I thought - a pleasant flight now - plenty of space to spread out.

Well, before we took off, some (huge) guy came back from somewhere behind us (not E+) and just stated "I'm going to sit there" - not rude, but certainly not a polite "do you guys mind if I sit there" question.

Think I should have told him to ask the flight attendent? He may have not had an E+ capable ticket (or status). That would have been kind of a jerky thing to do, but instead I suffered the cramping for the next four hours.

What would other FT'ers have done?

I would have politely informed him that the seat was blocked, which would have been entirely truthful. Given that the (huge) guy was probably not a frequent traveler--I would hope frequent travelers would know better--he would probably have shrugged and looked elsewhere.

"Excellent, sir. Let me ring the flight attendant to process your upgrade. I think you'll really find it worth the money"

Pat

Seriously. Especially now when they actually charge people a yearly fee.

I would ring the button like there was no tomorrow ^ ^

I would have said, also, that the seat was blocked for me by United.

Was this after the FA asked you whether you would be willing to assist in an evac?

...most people are not going to call the flight attendant over to have her deal with a situation like someone trying to change a seat. and if they do call the fa, the chance is she'd say - 'go ahead' and take the seat - especially if they've just closed the door. it's not right, but we all know that not all fa's are the same and some are oblivious to the rules.

and while this is a bit off topic, flying from PIT>DEN on Saturday - the csa put a guy with P2 status in E+ along with his family of three others with no status. I was standing at the podium when this was done and it sort of irked me - either this section is reserved for those with status - or it's not.

Thank you for the response; it is helpful. I was actually a little embarrassed to say that I wanted to stretch out across the middle row since that may appear to be rude or even inappropriate to take the seats.